Alternative medicine (theories)

The origins, theories of, and influence of Alternative Medicine

The esoteric wisdom of ancient healers and of plant lore has been central to medicine since ancient times, not only spawning approaches such as herbalism, traditional Chinese medicine, biofeedback, and homeopathy, but also influencing mainstream approaches to illness.These approaches draw upon general theories, such as the 'theory of similars' or the related 'theory of signatures'.

For instance, the onion was favoured by the Egyptians not only as a food, and used as a medicine, but also respected for reflecting their view of the universe's multi-layered structure. Egyptians identifed medicinal properties in plants such as myrrh, aloe, peppermint, garlic and castor oil

The medical use of plants by the ancient Greeks reflected their idea that each of the twelve primary gods had characteristic plants. ON the other hand, herbs lacking such elevated 'connections', such as parsley, thyme, fennel and clery were allowed correspondingly more everyday roles in health.

Healing plants are also featured extensively in ancient Arabian lore, in the Bible, and in the druidic tradition of the ancient Celts. Herbal tradtionswere centnral to life in the Mayan, Aztec and Incan civilizations, and north American Indian herbal rituals.

The transition from mystical and supernatural understandings of illness to 'scientific' ones is still highly controversial.

One way to approach the debate (and lack of debate) between alternative and conventional approaches to health and biology is by comparing their two languages and trying to find proper translations, as Samuel Kuhn suggested.

Alternative medicine operates under a holist paradigm. It tries to identify shapes, as in the doctrine of signatures, and make them "resonate", as in homeopathy, which lies on the law of similars. It should be reminded that Plato, when he conceived the notion of Ideas, was also referring to the notion of shape (eidolon, from which "idea" comes, also means shape or structure).

Conventional medicine, of course, is concerned with shapes, as exemplified by our modern icons : the double helix (DNA), the key-lock model of chemical messenger-receptor action, and the more elaborate 3D protein simulations that fascinate most of us. However, although molecular biochemistry is entirely based on the shape of proteins, molecules and electron clouds around nuclei, it would be erroneous to assume that molecular biochemistry covers all shapes and forms found in the living universe. It is not its purpose, because it operates under the paradigm of logical reductionism. Under this paradigm, it is believed (but not provable) that, by reducing life to its most fundamental components, by analyzing all its details, it will be possible to account for the observed universe.

The alternative view (which was the conventional view before the Enlightenment), on the contrary, adopts a phenomenological perspective. Observing that one plant, because of its shape, evokes an image, an idea, or an impression, the alternative-mided practicioner will immediately use it as a tool to discover occurences of this Idea in the sick or healthy body or mind. This analogical thinking, which is often called "magical thinking", is prevalent in dreams and normal thought processes, but is not integrated in the Scientific discourse, and is often condemned as fallacious (e.g. animism).

But does science have, in its own terms, a way to account for shapes in nature? Thia is where the most heated debate is taking place today. Rupert Sheldrake, a respected biologist, came to the conclusion that the tools he was given were logically incapable of explaining how life develops the way it does: it provided the building material, but not the blueprints. When he published in a book his analyses and hypotheses, the most respected journal, Nature, called his book "a book for burning" through the voice of John Maddox, the editor-in-chief. Rupert Sheldrake had proposed the notion of morphogenetic fiedls, a notion not unlike Plato's Ideas.

Could the history of philosophy, and in particular the dichotomy between Plato and the Presocratics, in particular the atomists, illuminate the present debate between alternative and conventional approaches to nature and health?